Passion and Silence
by Luna Lovegood5
Summary: The dream that led Rose to the Doctor in Doomsday. There's nothing but black, and a voice...


_Disclaimer: Oh, come off it. _

_I've had a kick at the present tense here, as I never normally write in it. Tell me what you think?_

_For Emma, because she's very good at pretending to listen._

It was the first dream she'd had in that bed.

That familiar sensation, that aching, spreading through her, making her feel as heavy as lead and as though the thing she was missing was physically absent from her body, the loss of something essential rather than just emotional pain. It isn't fair that it should stalk her now, too, as it does constantly through her waking moments. Dreams were supposed to be a respite. She curls up instinctively in her sleep, trying to placate the feeling of loss that settles about her stomach with her own arms.

A wall, looming slowly, inevitably towards her, and she presses against it just as she had in real life. So cold and hard in comparison to real, living flesh…he had been cold, but he never made _her _feel that way. Maybe, a little pervading voice in her mind tells her, if she pushes hard enough, she can work her way through the wall and reach him, hold him, feel skin where it had once been, where it had been replaced by brick.

Even her imagination can't put this desperate yearning for him to use, can't turn solid, unfeeling mass to moving, breathing reunion. All she wants is to hold him instead of a wall.

She's so close to the wall that she can't see it any more; colour evades her and all is black. Perhaps she has her eyes closed.

But then there is falling, swooping, uncontrollable spiralling, down down down, so dark and so alone as she slips through a vortex of her dreams. She remembers, though courtesy of her own memory or as part of the dream she isn't quite sure, waking up to such nightmares with the comforting hum of the TARDIS in her mind, even sometimes a comforting hand on her pillow and voice in her ear. Arms around her, holding her close and closer still when she tries to move back in slight embarrassment at this show of weakness, and she wishes now that she spent less time pulling away while she had the chance to be near him.

At this, a golden light sweeps up to meet her, cushioning and slowing her fall, swirling gently all around her and she is suspended like Alice down the rabbit hole. And a voice…

She doesn't even need her brain to tell her she recognises it. She's heard it a thousand times before, a million, but never quite in this tone. Calling out, always calling, destitute and vulnerable, aching as she does for him, fragile like the vibrations the word caused could shatter their maker if they went unanswered.

_'Rose…Rose…'_

Always Rose, always a question and a statement rolled into one as it used to be, and she knows she needs to follow it. She wouldn't care if she had no choice in the matter…

_'Rose…'_

She'd follow that call to the end of the world.

That won't be necessary, though, the dream tells her, the golden light providing an emotional warmth she thought she'd never feel again. Suddenly, she is at peace with the world, and wants that haunting syllable to stay in her ears forever. It is mending her, slowly, and she knows she can't let it go, that she has to take hold of it, that she'd allow it to summon her anywhere.

Power swells through her, the golden light intensifying until it burns her inside. Bad wolf, bad wolf. _'Rose…'_ stronger now in volume, weaker now in tone. She has left the question too long unanswered.

_Where are you?_

And now she sees him on a beach, two so broken that they're not sure they can even find all the pieces to put back together again. Besides, they are two separate puzzles now. She feels like Humpty Dumpty. He laughs. Why are they still standing apart?

There is rushing, there is running, and finally she feels lips and hands and skin instead of wall and cold and cement. There is talking, she thinks, but she can focus on nothing but the feel of him.

Then he's gone – or perhaps she is – and she wishes she'd looked at his face instead of closing her eyes. It's black again, and she's falling back. Rushing upwards is easier, less frightening, but it hurts so much more this time.

There's nothing, nothing but that little voice._ 'Rose, Rose…'_ and now she's not sure if it's coming from her head or from him. It's further away, calling still, but she can feel it slipping away even though she knows she is not physically moving.

_'Rose…'_

The voice echoes through her mind, but there is no hand to hold.

_'Rose…'_

She wakes up. Alone.

_'Rose…'_

She knows where to go.

--

_'Rose…Rose…'_ even now, though it could just be an echo of her memory.

_He should be here_, she thinks as she crosses the windy beach, a vast expanse of empty sand. He isn't where she found him in the dream; he isn't where he said he'd be. _Where are you?_

Then, for the first time, she knows something is happening even though the dream hadn't told her it would.

This time, she doesn't need him to call her name in order to find him. It begins with a shiver, the sense that something is coming, followed by the tiniest of noises. No bang, no pop, no explosion into existence…just the tiniest little vibration as if the air is shimmering with the effort of bringing him here.

"You look like a ghost." He looks like a dream.

She realised later that, in a way, he was.

It isn't right. It isn't supposed to happen like this. The dream, which she knows now must have been, in some way or another, planted by him, lied. She can't even hold his hand in the one time when she needs physical contact above all else. He isn't close enough, never can be close enough, not even when he's pushing himself through to her world.

"I'm still just an image. No touch."

Her question was never supposed to be greeted with such an answer, not when this was the one, the final, chance available to them to have something more than they had before dared themselves to believe was there.

Just the sight of him is insufficient for comfort; her memory could provide her with as much. All this time craving to touch him, be held by him, daring to think she'd get that chance again, being fooled by the dream into truly believing she would…and now that reality has differed from the dream, she doesn't know what to say.

She'll always be left with the memory of that dream in comparison to reality. It's cruel, she thinks, to have dreamt so much and have only half of it realised, but maybe it's best. She couldn't have done without one or the other; she needs the words reality provides as much as she needed the physical comfort of the dream. Besides, if she were totally honest, it always had been the words he was all about anyway.

Afterwards, she wonders how much of her dream belongs to him and how much of it could be attributed to her own wishful thinking.


End file.
